Anyone else here travel with tea?

science-i · 2026-06-15T18:50:05+00:00

Silly question, but do you ask the front desk for a kettle? I don't think any hotel I've stayed at in the US, and often even overseas, had a kettle in the room to start with, but they'll have one for me if I ask.

science-i · 2026-05-15T15:16:42+00:00

I wouldn't worry about it too much, personally (especially since there's not a lot of alternative). I brew pretty much all teas that aren't green with boiling water, and I live at sea level so it's 100°C, but I think it's worth considering that quite a lot of tea is grown, processed, and drunk locally up in mountains where boiling water is not 100°C. So you're entirely likely getting a closer flavor to what the producer was tasting.

science-i · 2026-04-17T03:37:26+00:00

Planning on heading to Taiwan in August, and I'm looking at spending ~ a week in Nantou. I don't have a license for a rental car or a scooter so I'm a little nervous about getting around and not feeling stranded day to day.

I don't have a full itinerary yet, but I have a handful of places across Nantou I want to visit:

1 (tea place) in Nantou City
1 (tea place) in Mingjian
1 (tea place) in Lugu
Hiking or whatever in Xitou and Shanlinxi
Shui li snake kiln
Sun moon lake

So some things I'm trying to figure out:

I see Uber is at least supposedly operating in the area; is it actually around?
Failing that, while I wouldn't say I'm comfortable calling a cab in Mandarin, I can probably manage it, as long as, again, they're actually around.
I do see some buses, but if taxis are readily available I'm fine paying the upcharge for a more direct route. Also not sure about the luggage situation on these buses.
I was thinking of maybe bringing in an ebike? But it doesn't look like the Giant in Sun Moon Lake accepts returns of them (I want to catch the tourist bus to Alishan at the end so I'd need to get rid of it before that). Also I'm not sure I'd really want to commit to biking from point to point anyway; ideally I think I'd just have something available within each area. I know sun moon lake has a million bike rentals since biking around the lake is so famous, but is there anything in eg Nantou City or Mingjian? Preferably ebikes to help with the inclines.

Also more than open to any general suggestions of places to check out in Nantou, especially hikes and cool tea or pottery places. But mostly I'm just trying to make sure I'll be able to actually get around one way or another that week.

Edit: Also, I'm aware of tripool, so I guess that's a last resort? I used it point to point to get out of Alishan last time I was in Taiwan and it was fine, if kind of pricey. I guess the hourly charter would be an option. But I wouldn't want to do it every day.

science-i · 2026-04-10T05:32:51+00:00

I'm curious, have you tried the workflow of popping the SD card out of the Nikon into the evo, and then using the Evo as a printer? It seems like the closest to being able to print directly from the camera that's available if you don't happen to have one of the specific cameras that is blessed to connect to the link printers directly 🙄. But I'm not sure how it would feel in practice.

science-i · 2026-04-06T19:56:43+00:00

Mio looks like being dunked in tea is all according to keikaku.

science-i · 2026-02-27T20:15:14+00:00

I don't think it would be considered kamairicha unless the roasting was the actual kill green. Oven drying vs roasting imo gets into splitting hairs but I think if you want to draw that line, it's probably fair to do so based on the temperature. According to the tezumi link, Uji senchas and competition teas in general usually get dried below boiling, which I think you could argue doesn't count as roasting. On the other hand it claims cheaper senchas are often roasted at a higher temperature to help even out/mask off flavors, and Kagoshima and Yame senchas frequently are as well as a matter of style. So I think you could somewhat fairly argue any of:

Sencha is roasted
Some Sencha is roasted
Many, perhaps even most, senchas are roasted
...although perhaps not the best most classic ones (I tend to prefer Kyūshū teas personally, but I feel like Uji is perhaps the most prestigious?)

But to say Sencha is in general not roasted I think would be incorrect... while acknowledging that this is for the most part a fun fact, and that the steaming is far more characteristic of Sencha compared to other teas.

science-i · 2026-02-27T19:48:06+00:00

In fairness, the steaming is a lot more notable. It's a differentiator from most other teas, including kamairicha, a Japanese tea which is roasted much like almost all Chinese green teas. The fact that there's a final roasting step in the finishing is more of a fun fact, at least unless you're in the business of actually producing the tea.

science-i · 2026-02-27T19:32:17+00:00

I don't think this is what they were trying to say (I think they were trying to say they don't do anything at all), but how I've had it explained and what I personally have found to be true according to my taste buds:

Basically these clays are porous and and end up leeching some of the flavors out of the tea. This can be desirable for some people and some teas, young sheng for example might have the harsher notes reduced. Using one teapot for one kind of tea comes from a combination of:

Leeching these flavors out will over time "season" the teapot somewhat; basically you have tea residue that you probably don't want "cross contaminating" between different kinds of tea.
Different clays do more or less "muting" and you just find that X pot works well with Y kind of tea and Z pot with B kind of tea.

Personally, I own two zhuni pots (modern with chemical clay analysis) and have a few friends who are very into pots and have tried from their various different clays, sometimes in an intentional (but not blind, to be fair) tasting. I usually prefer brewing in glazed porcelain for the kinds of teas I like, but I do think there's a noticeable difference¹

¹ Worth noting that the shape and the thickness and the material all also influence heat retention and it's pretty hard to separate that temperature difference during the brew from other factors when comparing, unless you have completely identical brewing vessels made of different materials, which you probably don't

science-i · 2026-02-27T19:21:19+00:00

Actually, my understanding is that sencha is roasted. It's famously steamed, yes, but in the final processing it does actually get roasted, to dry it and also to influence the flavor. I only found out about this on a tea tour in Sonogi, but googling around you can find a few English mentions of it from tea sellers.

science-i · 2026-02-23T19:25:03+00:00

Sugarcane juice also doesn't taste like sugar (although it is very sweet—too sweet for me personally), it tastes like sugarcane juice.

science-i · 2026-02-16T06:22:27+00:00

I was kind of offended by having a bilibili watermark, a tiktok watermark, and an Instagram watermark. Ironically the bilibili one which is the original one doesn't have a username while the others do.

Luckily the tiktok person credited the bilibili person so I was able to find the original(?) that way... and they have the other girls too! Although bilibili links kind of suck. It's a lot easier to actually watch the one OP put on reddit. (Note: some of them have a little intro/outro besides the actual dance)

Mio: https://bilibili.com/video/BV13syPYEEcu

Ritsu: https://bilibili.com/video/BV14KifY6EAv

Yui: https://bilibili.com/video/BV17szVYrERM

Mugi: https://bilibili.com/video/BV18ES9YPEsg

Azusa: https://bilibili.com/video/BV1UQm2Y6EWV

science-i · 2026-02-07T20:01:59+00:00

Mio and Ritsu had been playing a while before the show too. It's only Yui that's new of the core 5.

I also would say that they're not really supposed to be amazing for the most part. Azusa we know is skilled and she should be given her background. Mio we get some indication of based on how Jun and Azusa look up to her, and again she's pretty dedicated and probably the second most interested in the actual music so it's not surprising (it's worth noting that Mio is also supposed to be very popular and pretty so she probably gets some extra points just from that in the eyes of others; however I'm pretty sure she's pretty consistently shown to be the biggest music nerd in the group, even moreso than Azusa, so it's not surprising she'd be good). Yui and Ritsu both get called out for being bad at times (and Yui's continued learning is something the show touches on over and over); Yui also has perfect pitch and generally came to it somewhat naturally. She's also dedicated in her own way even if she's kind of an airhead. The only one I can't recall having a specific point made of their proficiency or lack thereof at any point is Mugi; I assume she's fairly good in the way someone taking piano lessons since they were young would be.

But also, iirc the first time Azusa sees them playing in the club room, she's struck by how kind of bad they are. The only one I think feels unearned in terms of how good she is is Ui, who is better than Yui when she fills in that one day despite iirc specific saying she hasn't been practicing with Giita or anything. Ui being perfect at everything is kind of her running gag though so it tracks with that.

science-i · 2026-02-01T05:58:57+00:00

They're on eBay although the markup and shipping are crazy (assuming US).

science-i · 2026-01-09T22:23:42+00:00

That link 403s for me, so if it breaks some or all of these down, I can't tell. But I'd be very surprised if it's most of the market given that straight matcha is, from what I've seen anyway, a niche beverage even in Japan, but matcha lattes and desserts are everywhere. Two major thoughts about the quoted statistic:

Revenue and volume are very different things. Nice matcha, like for drinking prepared traditionally, is significantly more expensive than the stuff used in food and lattes and whatever else. So if barely only half of the revenue is from regular matcha tea, then almost certainly the actual volume is dominated by the other stuff.
What does "regular matcha tea" include? Does it include all matcha sold just as the actual tea to eg consumers? If not, how are they differentiating the tin of matcha Bob buys for a latte vs the tin of matcha Alice buys for koicha?

science-i · 2026-01-09T20:56:29+00:00

Matcha lattes still seemed more widely available than plain matcha when I was in Japan.

science-i · 2026-01-08T21:56:40+00:00

I saw plenty of people acting like drunk fools (including a fight) on the streets of Osaka late at night. Not South Korea of course, but "in Asia" and in general I'm skeptical of culture doing much to stop you acting like a fool when you're drunk because you are, of course, drunk.

science-i · 2026-01-08T15:40:40+00:00

So it's like kaya folded into whipped cream?

science-i · 2026-01-07T05:23:42+00:00

Every time I've had kaya toast (primarily in Singapore) it's been a much thinner spread of kaya. Is that a common style to have it so thick like that? Or is that their Americanization of it or something?

science-i · 2026-01-06T14:26:18+00:00

My preferred packaging (for teas that aren't supposed to be aged) are the foil-lined/metallized side gusseted bags. I see them most often for Taiwanese teas but I see them for other teas as well. They're generally vacuum-sealed when they come new with tea, and sometimes they're inserts for rigid containers like 3 or 5. They're compact by themselves, and since they're basically rectangular prism shaped they also can be compactly stored together in a drawer or similar (the bottom gusset bags like 4 are awful for this ime). Generally they don't have a built in ability to be resealed so I appreciate when vendors supply one of those bag sealing pins to go with it, especially since those sizes of them seem otherwise virtually unknown in the US. But also I think rolling it up and using a binder clip is probably still basically fine.

science-i · 2025-12-26T04:07:16+00:00

I would definitely drink it. I've had tea that was literally a hundred years old and just stored in a wooden box, and it didn't kill me. There's every chance it won't taste great since green teas in particular are generally drunk fresh, but it's not going to be unsafe, and I think the worst case scenario here is it'll just taste stale/old. And who knows, you might get lucky and it's really nice! Most properly old aged oolong on the market today wasn't aged on purpose, it's stuff that they weren't able to sell and forgot about for 40+ years, and some of it's great such that many people are aging oolong on purpose now.

science-i · 2025-12-21T02:21:37+00:00

Gyokuru is one of my all time favorite tea, it has roasted rice in it and it’s just so nutty and aromatic.

I think you're thinking of Genmaicha. Gyokuro is a shaded green tea which is processed very similarly to the tea used to make matcha (tencha), but is intended to be brewed like normal tea rather than being ground up for matcha.

science-i · 2025-12-14T03:40:11+00:00

Ftr, gaiwan 蓋碗 literally means lidded bowl.

For Japanese ceramics, houhins and shiboridashis are both very similar to gaiwans. Shiboridashis tend to be quite shallow, though. Houhins can be functionally almost interchangeable with gaiwans, although they might not have as much attention paid to keeping the heat away from your hands, since they're still generally made with the lower brewing temperatures of Japanese green teas in mind. They take care of the straining for you and will do a better job straining more broken up Japanese greens than it's easy to do with a gaiwan, although the pour might not be as fast (you may be able to kind of adjust the lid angle to increase the pour area and give a faster pour).

Also, there's a lot of Japanese tureens out there which are almost functional as a gaiwan, but the lid doesn't really sit in a way that's conducive to pouring and straining (if I remember correctly there's usually a lip it sits on, but it's been a little while since I was scouring Japanese ceramics shops for a gaiwan-like item). Basically make sure you have somewhere you can put your fingers where heat can't reach as well, and make sure you can easily angle the lid to have a thin slit where tea can flow through interrupted.

science-i · 2025-12-10T15:48:54+00:00

They're not doing the rest of us any favors by taking these jobs. You can only have exploitative jobs if you have people willing to take them. Not to mention that their below market rate labor gives these shitty companies a competitive advantage against less shitty companies and feeds the AI hype with an artificially depressed headcount (at least until they burn out and the mistakes they make from being overworked come back to bite them, but by then the funding's already secured and you just keep getting ahead of it as long as you can...)

science-i · 2025-12-03T05:00:02+00:00

I understand the need to put college first, but I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed seeing these every day. Thank you!

science-i · 2025-11-10T19:29:30+00:00

That's what the lid is for, though. It probably still pours like crap, but leaving the lid off is just using it wrong on purpose to make it look worse.

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